Apparatus and method for optimized tile-based rendering

ABSTRACT

A virtual reality apparatus and method are described for tile-based rendering. For example, one embodiment of an apparatus comprises: a set of on-chip geometry buffers including a first buffer to store geometry data, and a set of pointer buffers to store pointers to the geometry data; a tile-based immediate mode rendering (TBIMR) module to perform tile-based immediate mode rendering using geometry data and pointers stored within the set of on-chip geometry buffers; spill circuitry to determine when the on-chip geometry buffers are over-subscribed and responsively spill additional geometry data and/or pointers to an off-chip memory; and a prefetcher to start prefetching the geometry data from the off-chip memory as space becomes available within the on-chip geometry buffers, the TBIMR module to perform tile-based immediate mode rendering using the geometry data prefetched from the off-chip memory.

BACKGROUND Field of the Invention

This invention relates generally to the field of computer processors. More particularly, the invention relates to an apparatus and method for optimized tile-based rendering such as tile-based immediate mode rendering (TBIMR).

Description of the Related Art

Tile-Based Immediate Mode Rendering (TBIMR) architectures include multiple on-chip buffers for storing geometry for each tile. In current architectures, one on-chip buffer stores the actual geometry (e.g., vertices, triangles) for each tile and one or more other on-chip buffers store pointers to the various vertices associated with each tile. One problem with this configuration is that because these buffers are limited, once they are filled up, the data for each tile needs to be drained, one by one, and then subsequently tiled again if needed. As a result, a complete render pass to the render target is never achieved on chip.

BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS

A better understanding of the present invention can be obtained from the following detailed description in conjunction with the following drawings, in which:

FIG. 1 is a block diagram of an embodiment of a computer system with a processor having one or more processor cores and graphics processors;

FIG. 2 is a block diagram of one embodiment of a processor having one or more processor cores, an integrated memory controller, and an integrated graphics processor;

FIG. 3 is a block diagram of one embodiment of a graphics processor which may be a discreet graphics processing unit, or may be graphics processor integrated with a plurality of processing cores;

FIG. 4 is a block diagram of an embodiment of a graphics-processing engine for a graphics processor;

FIG. 5 is a block diagram of another embodiment of a graphics processor;

FIG. 6 is a block diagram of thread execution logic including an array of processing elements;

FIG. 7 illustrates a graphics processor execution unit instruction format according to an embodiment;

FIG. 8 is a block diagram of another embodiment of a graphics processor which includes a graphics pipeline, a media pipeline, a display engine, thread execution logic, and a render output pipeline;

FIG. 9A is a block diagram illustrating a graphics processor command format according to an embodiment;

FIG. 9B is a block diagram illustrating a graphics processor command sequence according to an embodiment;

FIG. 10 illustrates exemplary graphics software architecture for a data processing system according to an embodiment;

FIG. 11 illustrates an exemplary IP core development system that may be used to manufacture an integrated circuit to perform operations according to an embodiment;

FIG. 12 illustrates an exemplary system on a chip integrated circuit that may be fabricated using one or more IP cores, according to an embodiment;

FIG. 13 illustrates an exemplary graphics processor of a system on a chip integrated circuit that may be fabricated using one or more IP cores;

FIG. 14 illustrates an additional exemplary graphics processor of a system on a chip integrated circuit that may be fabricated using one or more IP cores

FIG. 15 illustrates one embodiment of an architecture for tile-based immediate mode rendering (TBIMR);

FIG. 16 illustrates one embodiment of on-chip memory buffers including pointer queues for each tile and geometry data buffers;

FIG. 17 illustrates a method in accordance with one embodiment of the invention;

FIG. 18 illustrates a geometry processing module and a pixel processing module in accordance with one embodiment of the invention;

FIG. 19 illustrates a method in accordance with one embodiment of the invention;

FIG. 20 illustrates how bounding boxes are compared to depth values in one embodiment of the invention;

FIG. 21 illustrates sub-tile status in relation to sub-tile depth values;

FIGS. 22A-B illustrates different embodiments in which tiles are selectively updated; and

FIG. 23 illustrates one embodiment in which tiles from different frames are blended together using a weighting technique.

DETAILED DESCRIPTION

In the following description, for the purposes of explanation, numerous specific details are set forth in order to provide a thorough understanding of the embodiments of the invention described below. It will be apparent, however, to one skilled in the art that the embodiments of the invention may be practiced without some of these specific details. In other instances, well-known structures and devices are shown in block diagram form to avoid obscuring the underlying principles of the embodiments of the invention.

Exemplary Graphics Processor Architectures and Data Types

System Overview

FIG. 1 is a block diagram of a processing system 100, according to an embodiment. In various embodiments the system 100 includes one or more processors 102 and one or more graphics processors 108, and may be a single processor desktop system, a multiprocessor workstation system, or a server system having a large number of processors 102 or processor cores 107. In one embodiment, the system 100 is a processing platform incorporated within a system-on-a-chip (SoC) integrated circuit for use in mobile, handheld, or embedded devices.

An embodiment of system 100 can include, or be incorporated within a server-based gaming platform, a game console, including a game and media console, a mobile gaming console, a handheld game console, or an online game console. In some embodiments system 100 is a mobile phone, smart phone, tablet computing device or mobile Internet device. Data processing system 100 can also include, couple with, or be integrated within a wearable device, such as a smart watch wearable device, smart eyewear device, augmented reality device, or virtual reality device. In some embodiments, data processing system 100 is a television or set top box device having one or more processors 102 and a graphical interface generated by one or more graphics processors 108.

In some embodiments, the one or more processors 102 each include one or more processor cores 107 to process instructions which, when executed, perform operations for system and user software. In some embodiments, each of the one or more processor cores 107 is configured to process a specific instruction set 109. In some embodiments, instruction set 109 may facilitate Complex Instruction Set Computing (CISC), Reduced Instruction Set Computing (RISC), or computing via a Very Long Instruction Word (VLIW). Multiple processor cores 107 may each process a different instruction set 109, which may include instructions to facilitate the emulation of other instruction sets. Processor core 107 may also include other processing devices, such a Digital Signal Processor (DSP).

In some embodiments, the processor 102 includes cache memory 104. Depending on the architecture, the processor 102 can have a single internal cache or multiple levels of internal cache. In some embodiments, the cache memory is shared among various components of the processor 102. In some embodiments, the processor 102 also uses an external cache (e.g., a Level-3 (L3) cache or Last Level Cache (LLC)) (not shown), which may be shared among processor cores 107 using known cache coherency techniques. A register file 106 is additionally included in processor 102 which may include different types of registers for storing different types of data (e.g., integer registers, floating point registers, status registers, and an instruction pointer register). Some registers may be general-purpose registers, while other registers may be specific to the design of the processor 102.

In some embodiments, processor 102 is coupled with a processor bus 110 to transmit communication signals such as address, data, or control signals between processor 102 and other components in system 100. In one embodiment the system 100 uses an exemplary ‘hub’ system architecture, including a memory controller hub 116 and an Input Output (I/O) controller hub 130. A memory controller hub 116 facilitates communication between a memory device and other components of system 100, while an I/O Controller Hub (ICH) 130 provides connections to I/O devices via a local I/O bus. In one embodiment, the logic of the memory controller hub 116 is integrated within the processor.

Memory device 120 can be a dynamic random access memory (DRAM) device, a static random access memory (SRAM) device, flash memory device, phase-change memory device, or some other memory device having suitable performance to serve as process memory. In one embodiment the memory device 120 can operate as system memory for the system 100, to store data 122 and instructions 121 for use when the one or more processors 102 executes an application or process. Memory controller hub 116 also couples with an optional external graphics processor 112, which may communicate with the one or more graphics processors 108 in processors 102 to perform graphics and media operations.

In some embodiments, ICH 130 enables peripherals to connect to memory device 120 and processor 102 via a high-speed I/O bus. The I/O peripherals include, but are not limited to, an audio controller 146, a firmware interface 128, a wireless transceiver 126 (e.g., Wi-Fi, Bluetooth), a data storage device 124 (e.g., hard disk drive, flash memory, etc.), and a legacy I/O controller 140 for coupling legacy (e.g., Personal System 2 (PS/2)) devices to the system. One or more Universal Serial Bus (USB) controllers 142 connect input devices, such as keyboard and mouse 144 combinations. A network controller 134 may also couple with ICH 130. In some embodiments, a high-performance network controller (not shown) couples with processor bus 110. It will be appreciated that the system 100 shown is exemplary and not limiting, as other types of data processing systems that are differently configured may also be used. For example, the I/O controller hub 130 may be integrated within the one or more processor 102, or the memory controller hub 116 and I/O controller hub 130 may be integrated into a discreet external graphics processor, such as the external graphics processor 112.

FIG. 2 is a block diagram of an embodiment of a processor 200 having one or more processor cores 202A-202N, an integrated memory controller 214, and an integrated graphics processor 208. Those elements of FIG. 2 having the same reference numbers (or names) as the elements of any other figure herein can operate or function in any manner similar to that described elsewhere herein, but are not limited to such. Processor 200 can include additional cores up to and including additional core 202N represented by the dashed lined boxes. Each of processor cores 202A-202N includes one or more internal cache units 204A-204N. In some embodiments each processor core also has access to one or more shared cached units 206.

The internal cache units 204A-204N and shared cache units 206 represent a cache memory hierarchy within the processor 200. The cache memory hierarchy may include at least one level of instruction and data cache within each processor core and one or more levels of shared mid-level cache, such as a Level 2 (L2), Level 3 (L3), Level 4 (L4), or other levels of cache, where the highest level of cache before external memory is classified as the LLC. In some embodiments, cache coherency logic maintains coherency between the various cache units 206 and 204A-204N.

In some embodiments, processor 200 may also include a set of one or more bus controller units 216 and a system agent core 210. The one or more bus controller units 216 manage a set of peripheral buses, such as one or more Peripheral Component Interconnect buses (e.g., PCI, PCI Express). System agent core 210 provides management functionality for the various processor components. In some embodiments, system agent core 210 includes one or more integrated memory controllers 214 to manage access to various external memory devices (not shown).

In some embodiments, one or more of the processor cores 202A-202N include support for simultaneous multi-threading. In such embodiment, the system agent core 210 includes components for coordinating and operating cores 202A-202N during multi-threaded processing. System agent core 210 may additionally include a power control unit (PCU), which includes logic and components to regulate the power state of processor cores 202A-202N and graphics processor 208.

In some embodiments, processor 200 additionally includes graphics processor 208 to execute graphics processing operations. In some embodiments, the graphics processor 208 couples with the set of shared cache units 206, and the system agent core 210, including the one or more integrated memory controllers 214. In some embodiments, a display controller 211 is coupled with the graphics processor 208 to drive graphics processor output to one or more coupled displays. In some embodiments, display controller 211 may be a separate module coupled with the graphics processor via at least one interconnect, or may be integrated within the graphics processor 208 or system agent core 210.

In some embodiments, a ring based interconnect unit 212 is used to couple the internal components of the processor 200. However, an alternative interconnect unit may be used, such as a point-to-point interconnect, a switched interconnect, or other techniques, including techniques well known in the art. In some embodiments, graphics processor 208 couples with the ring interconnect 212 via an I/O link 213.

The exemplary I/O link 213 represents at least one of multiple varieties of I/O interconnects, including an on package I/O interconnect which facilitates communication between various processor components and a high-performance embedded memory module 218, such as an eDRAM module. In some embodiments, each of the processor cores 202A-202N and graphics processor 208 use embedded memory modules 218 as a shared Last Level Cache.

In some embodiments, processor cores 202A-202N are homogenous cores executing the same instruction set architecture. In another embodiment, processor cores 202A-202N are heterogeneous in terms of instruction set architecture (ISA), where one or more of processor cores 202A-202N execute a first instruction set, while at least one of the other cores executes a subset of the first instruction set or a different instruction set. In one embodiment processor cores 202A-202N are heterogeneous in terms of microarchitecture, where one or more cores having a relatively higher power consumption couple with one or more power cores having a lower power consumption. Additionally, processor 200 can be implemented on one or more chips or as an SoC integrated circuit having the illustrated components, in addition to other components.

FIG. 3 is a block diagram of a graphics processor 300, which may be a discrete graphics processing unit, or may be a graphics processor integrated with a plurality of processing cores. In some embodiments, the graphics processor communicates via a memory mapped I/O interface to registers on the graphics processor and with commands placed into the processor memory. In some embodiments, graphics processor 300 includes a memory interface 314 to access memory. Memory interface 314 can be an interface to local memory, one or more internal caches, one or more shared external caches, and/or to system memory.

In some embodiments, graphics processor 300 also includes a display controller 302 to drive display output data to a display device 320. Display controller 302 includes hardware for one or more overlay planes for the display and composition of multiple layers of video or user interface elements. In some embodiments, graphics processor 300 includes a video codec engine 306 to encode, decode, or transcode media to, from, or between one or more media encoding formats, including, but not limited to Moving Picture Experts Group (MPEG) formats such as MPEG-2, Advanced Video Coding (AVC) formats such as H.264/MPEG-4 AVC, as well as the Society of Motion Picture & Television Engineers (SMPTE) 421 M/VC-1, and Joint Photographic Experts Group (JPEG) formats such as JPEG, and Motion JPEG (MJPEG) formats.

In some embodiments, graphics processor 300 includes a block image transfer (BLIT) engine 304 to perform two-dimensional (2D) rasterizer operations including, for example, bit-boundary block transfers. However, in one embodiment, 2D graphics operations are performed using one or more components of graphics processing engine (GPE) 310. In some embodiments, GPE 310 is a compute engine for performing graphics operations, including three-dimensional (3D) graphics operations and media operations.

In some embodiments, GPE 310 includes a 3D pipeline 312 for performing 3D operations, such as rendering three-dimensional images and scenes using processing functions that act upon 3D primitive shapes (e.g., rectangle, triangle, etc.). The 3D pipeline 312 includes programmable and fixed function elements that perform various tasks within the element and/or spawn execution threads to a 3D/Media sub-system 315. While 3D pipeline 312 can be used to perform media operations, an embodiment of GPE 310 also includes a media pipeline 316 that is specifically used to perform media operations, such as video post-processing and image enhancement.

In some embodiments, media pipeline 316 includes fixed function or programmable logic units to perform one or more specialized media operations, such as video decode acceleration, video de-interlacing, and video encode acceleration in place of, or on behalf of video codec engine 306. In some embodiments, media pipeline 316 additionally includes a thread spawning unit to spawn threads for execution on 3D/Media sub-system 315. The spawned threads perform computations for the media operations on one or more graphics execution units included in 3D/Media sub-system 315.

In some embodiments, 3D/Media subsystem 315 includes logic for executing threads spawned by 3D pipeline 312 and media pipeline 316. In one embodiment, the pipelines send thread execution requests to 3D/Media subsystem 315, which includes thread dispatch logic for arbitrating and dispatching the various requests to available thread execution resources. The execution resources include an array of graphics execution units to process the 3D and media threads. In some embodiments, 3D/Media subsystem 315 includes one or more internal caches for thread instructions and data. In some embodiments, the subsystem also includes shared memory, including registers and addressable memory, to share data between threads and to store output data.

Graphics Processing Engine

FIG. 4 is a block diagram of a graphics processing engine 410 of a graphics processor in accordance with some embodiments. In one embodiment, the graphics processing engine (GPE) 410 is a version of the GPE 310 shown in FIG. 3. Elements of FIG. 4 having the same reference numbers (or names) as the elements of any other figure herein can operate or function in any manner similar to that described elsewhere herein, but are not limited to such. For example, the 3D pipeline 312 and media pipeline 316 of FIG. 3 are illustrated. The media pipeline 316 is optional in some embodiments of the GPE 410 and may not be explicitly included within the GPE 410. For example and in at least one embodiment, a separate media and/or image processor is coupled to the GPE 410.

In some embodiments, GPE 410 couples with or includes a command streamer 403, which provides a command stream to the 3D pipeline 312 and/or media pipelines 316. In some embodiments, command streamer 403 is coupled with memory, which can be system memory, or one or more of internal cache memory and shared cache memory. In some embodiments, command streamer 403 receives commands from the memory and sends the commands to 3D pipeline 312 and/or media pipeline 316. The commands are directives fetched from a ring buffer, which stores commands for the 3D pipeline 312 and media pipeline 316. In one embodiment, the ring buffer can additionally include batch command buffers storing batches of multiple commands. The commands for the 3D pipeline 312 can also include references to data stored in memory, such as but not limited to vertex and geometry data for the 3D pipeline 312 and/or image data and memory objects for the media pipeline 316. The 3D pipeline 312 and media pipeline 316 process the commands and data by performing operations via logic within the respective pipelines or by dispatching one or more execution threads to a graphics core array 414.

In various embodiments the 3D pipeline 312 can execute one or more shader programs, such as vertex shaders, geometry shaders, pixel shaders, fragment shaders, compute shaders, or other shader programs, by processing the instructions and dispatching execution threads to the graphics core array 414. The graphics core array 414 provides a unified block of execution resources. Multi-purpose execution logic (e.g., execution units) within the graphic core array 414 includes support for various 3D API shader languages and can execute multiple simultaneous execution threads associated with multiple shaders.

In some embodiments the graphics core array 414 also includes execution logic to perform media functions, such as video and/or image processing. In one embodiment, the execution units additionally include general-purpose logic that is programmable to perform parallel general purpose computational operations, in addition to graphics processing operations. The general purpose logic can perform processing operations in parallel or in conjunction with general purpose logic within the processor core(s) 107 of FIG. 1 or core 202A-202N as in FIG. 2.

Output data generated by threads executing on the graphics core array 414 can output data to memory in a unified return buffer (URB) 418. The URB 418 can store data for multiple threads. In some embodiments the URB 418 may be used to send data between different threads executing on the graphics core array 414. In some embodiments the URB 418 may additionally be used for synchronization between threads on the graphics core array and fixed function logic within the shared function logic 420.

In some embodiments, graphics core array 414 is scalable, such that the array includes a variable number of graphics cores, each having a variable number of execution units based on the target power and performance level of GPE 410. In one embodiment the execution resources are dynamically scalable, such that execution resources may be enabled or disabled as needed.

The graphics core array 414 couples with shared function logic 420 that includes multiple resources that are shared between the graphics cores in the graphics core array. The shared functions within the shared function logic 420 are hardware logic units that provide specialized supplemental functionality to the graphics core array 414. In various embodiments, shared function logic 420 includes but is not limited to sampler 421, math 422, and inter-thread communication (ITC) 423 logic. Additionally, some embodiments implement one or more cache(s) 425 within the shared function logic 420. A shared function is implemented where the demand for a given specialized function is insufficient for inclusion within the graphics core array 414. Instead a single instantiation of that specialized function is implemented as a stand-alone entity in the shared function logic 420 and shared among the execution resources within the graphics core array 414. The precise set of functions that are shared between the graphics core array 414 and included within the graphics core array 414 varies between embodiments.

FIG. 5 is a block diagram of another embodiment of a graphics processor 500. Elements of FIG. 5 having the same reference numbers (or names) as the elements of any other figure herein can operate or function in any manner similar to that described elsewhere herein, but are not limited to such.

In some embodiments, graphics processor 500 includes a ring interconnect 502, a pipeline front-end 504, a media engine 537, and graphics cores 580A-580N. In some embodiments, ring interconnect 502 couples the graphics processor to other processing units, including other graphics processors or one or more general-purpose processor cores. In some embodiments, the graphics processor is one of many processors integrated within a multi-core processing system.

In some embodiments, graphics processor 500 receives batches of commands via ring interconnect 502. The incoming commands are interpreted by a command streamer 503 in the pipeline front-end 504. In some embodiments, graphics processor 500 includes scalable execution logic to perform 3D geometry processing and media processing via the graphics core(s) 580A-580N. For 3D geometry processing commands, command streamer 503 supplies commands to geometry pipeline 536. For at least some media processing commands, command streamer 503 supplies the commands to a video front end 534, which couples with a media engine 537. In some embodiments, media engine 537 includes a Video Quality Engine (VQE) 530 for video and image post-processing and a multi-format encode/decode (MFX) 533 engine to provide hardware-accelerated media data encode and decode. In some embodiments, geometry pipeline 536 and media engine 537 each generate execution threads for the thread execution resources provided by at least one graphics core 580A.

In some embodiments, graphics processor 500 includes scalable thread execution resources featuring modular cores 580A-580N (sometimes referred to as core slices), each having multiple sub-cores 550A-550N, 560A-560N (sometimes referred to as core sub-slices). In some embodiments, graphics processor 500 can have any number of graphics cores 580A through 580N. In some embodiments, graphics processor 500 includes a graphics core 580A having at least a first sub-core 550A and a second sub-core 560A. In other embodiments, the graphics processor is a low power processor with a single sub-core (e.g., 550A). In some embodiments, graphics processor 500 includes multiple graphics cores 580A-580N, each including a set of first sub-cores 550A-550N and a set of second sub-cores 560A-560N. Each sub-core in the set of first sub-cores 550A-550N includes at least a first set of execution units 552A-552N and media/texture samplers 554A-554N. Each sub-core in the set of second sub-cores 560A-560N includes at least a second set of execution units 562A-562N and samplers 564A-564N. In some embodiments, each sub-core 550A-550N, 560A-560N shares a set of shared resources 570A-570N. In some embodiments, the shared resources include shared cache memory and pixel operation logic. Other shared resources may also be included in the various embodiments of the graphics processor.

Execution Units

FIG. 6 illustrates thread execution logic 600 including an array of processing elements employed in some embodiments of a GPE. Elements of FIG. 6 having the same reference numbers (or names) as the elements of any other figure herein can operate or function in any manner similar to that described elsewhere herein, but are not limited to such.

In some embodiments, thread execution logic 600 includes a shader processor 602, a thread dispatcher 604, instruction cache 606, a scalable execution unit array including a plurality of execution units 608A-608N, a sampler 610, a data cache 612, and a data port 614. In one embodiment the scalable execution unit array can dynamically scale by enabling or disabling one or more execution units (e.g., any of execution unit 608A, 608B, 608C, 608D, through 608N-1 and 608N) based on the computational requirements of a workload. In one embodiment the included components are interconnected via an interconnect fabric that links to each of the components. In some embodiments, thread execution logic 600 includes one or more connections to memory, such as system memory or cache memory, through one or more of instruction cache 606, data port 614, sampler 610, and execution units 608A-608N. In some embodiments, each execution unit (e.g. 608A) is a stand-alone programmable general purpose computational unit that is capable of executing multiple simultaneous hardware threads while processing multiple data elements in parallel for each thread. In various embodiments, the array of execution units 608A-608N is scalable to include any number individual execution units.

In some embodiments, the execution units 608A-608N are primarily used to execute shader programs. A shader processor 602 can process the various shader programs and dispatch execution threads associated with the shader programs via a thread dispatcher 604. In one embodiment the thread dispatcher includes logic to arbitrate thread initiation requests from the graphics and media pipelines and instantiate the requested threads on one or more execution unit in the execution units 608A-608N. For example, the geometry pipeline (e.g., 536 of FIG. 5) can dispatch vertex, tessellation, or geometry shaders to the thread execution logic 600 (FIG. 6) for processing. In some embodiments, thread dispatcher 604 can also process runtime thread spawning requests from the executing shader programs.

In some embodiments, the execution units 608A-608N support an instruction set that includes native support for many standard 3D graphics shader instructions, such that shader programs from graphics libraries (e.g., Direct 3D and OpenGL) are executed with a minimal translation. The execution units support vertex and geometry processing (e.g., vertex programs, geometry programs, vertex shaders), pixel processing (e.g., pixel shaders, fragment shaders) and general-purpose processing (e.g., compute and media shaders). Each of the execution units 608A-608N is capable of multi-issue single instruction multiple data (SIMD) execution and multi-threaded operation enables an efficient execution environment in the face of higher latency memory accesses. Each hardware thread within each execution unit has a dedicated high-bandwidth register file and associated independent thread-state. Execution is multi-issue per clock to pipelines capable of integer, single and double precision floating point operations, SIMD branch capability, logical operations, transcendental operations, and other miscellaneous operations. While waiting for data from memory or one of the shared functions, dependency logic within the execution units 608A-608N causes a waiting thread to sleep until the requested data has been returned. While the waiting thread is sleeping, hardware resources may be devoted to processing other threads. For example, during a delay associated with a vertex shader operation, an execution unit can perform operations for a pixel shader, fragment shader, or another type of shader program, including a different vertex shader.

Each execution unit in execution units 608A-608N operates on arrays of data elements. The number of data elements is the “execution size,” or the number of channels for the instruction. An execution channel is a logical unit of execution for data element access, masking, and flow control within instructions. The number of channels may be independent of the number of physical Arithmetic Logic Units (ALUs) or Floating Point Units (FPUs) for a particular graphics processor. In some embodiments, execution units 608A-608N support integer and floating-point data types.

The execution unit instruction set includes SIMD instructions. The various data elements can be stored as a packed data type in a register and the execution unit will process the various elements based on the data size of the elements. For example, when operating on a 256-bit wide vector, the 256 bits of the vector are stored in a register and the execution unit operates on the vector as four separate 64-bit packed data elements (Quad-Word (QW) size data elements), eight separate 32-bit packed data elements (Double Word (DW) size data elements), sixteen separate 16-bit packed data elements (Word (W) size data elements), or thirty-two separate 8-bit data elements (byte (B) size data elements). However, different vector widths and register sizes are possible.

One or more internal instruction caches (e.g., 606) are included in the thread execution logic 600 to cache thread instructions for the execution units. In some embodiments, one or more data caches (e.g., 612) are included to cache thread data during thread execution. In some embodiments, a sampler 610 is included to provide texture sampling for 3D operations and media sampling for media operations. In some embodiments, sampler 610 includes specialized texture or media sampling functionality to process texture or media data during the sampling process before providing the sampled data to an execution unit.

During execution, the graphics and media pipelines send thread initiation requests to thread execution logic 600 via thread spawning and dispatch logic. Once a group of geometric objects has been processed and rasterized into pixel data, pixel processor logic (e.g., pixel shader logic, fragment shader logic, etc.) within the shader processor 602 is invoked to further compute output information and cause results to be written to output surfaces (e.g., color buffers, depth buffers, stencil buffers, etc.). In some embodiments, a pixel shader or fragment shader calculates the values of the various vertex attributes that are to be interpolated across the rasterized object. In some embodiments, pixel processor logic within the shader processor 602 then executes an application programming interface (API)-supplied pixel or fragment shader program. To execute the shader program, the shader processor 602 dispatches threads to an execution unit (e.g., 608A) via thread dispatcher 604. In some embodiments, pixel shader 602 uses texture sampling logic in the sampler 610 to access texture data in texture maps stored in memory. Arithmetic operations on the texture data and the input geometry data compute pixel color data for each geometric fragment, or discards one or more pixels from further processing.

In some embodiments, the data port 614 provides a memory access mechanism for the thread execution logic 600 output processed data to memory for processing on a graphics processor output pipeline. In some embodiments, the data port 614 includes or couples to one or more cache memories (e.g., data cache 612) to cache data for memory access via the data port.

FIG. 7 is a block diagram illustrating a graphics processor instruction formats 700 according to some embodiments. In one or more embodiment, the graphics processor execution units support an instruction set having instructions in multiple formats. The solid lined boxes illustrate the components that are generally included in an execution unit instruction, while the dashed lines include components that are optional or that are only included in a sub-set of the instructions. In some embodiments, instruction format 700 described and illustrated are macro-instructions, in that they are instructions supplied to the execution unit, as opposed to micro-operations resulting from instruction decode once the instruction is processed.

In some embodiments, the graphics processor execution units natively support instructions in a 128-bit instruction format 710. A 64-bit compacted instruction format 730 is available for some instructions based on the selected instruction, instruction options, and number of operands. The native 128-bit instruction format 710 provides access to all instruction options, while some options and operations are restricted in the 64-bit instruction format 730. The native instructions available in the 64-bit instruction format 730 vary by embodiment. In some embodiments, the instruction is compacted in part using a set of index values in an index field 713. The execution unit hardware references a set of compaction tables based on the index values and uses the compaction table outputs to reconstruct a native instruction in the 128-bit instruction format 710.

For each format, instruction opcode 712 defines the operation that the execution unit is to perform. The execution units execute each instruction in parallel across the multiple data elements of each operand. For example, in response to an add instruction the execution unit performs a simultaneous add operation across each color channel representing a texture element or picture element. By default, the execution unit performs each instruction across all data channels of the operands. In some embodiments, instruction control field 714 enables control over certain execution options, such as channels selection (e.g., predication) and data channel order (e.g., swizzle). For instructions in the 128-bit instruction format 710 an exec-size field 716 limits the number of data channels that will be executed in parallel. In some embodiments, exec-size field 716 is not available for use in the 64-bit compact instruction format 730.

Some execution unit instructions have up to three operands including two source operands, src0 720, src1 722, and one destination 718. In some embodiments, the execution units support dual destination instructions, where one of the destinations is implied. Data manipulation instructions can have a third source operand (e.g., SRC2 724), where the instruction opcode 712 determines the number of source operands. An instruction's last source operand can be an immediate (e.g., hard-coded) value passed with the instruction.

In some embodiments, the 128-bit instruction format 710 includes an access/address mode field 726 specifying, for example, whether direct register addressing mode or indirect register addressing mode is used. When direct register addressing mode is used, the register address of one or more operands is directly provided by bits in the instruction.

In some embodiments, the 128-bit instruction format 710 includes an access/address mode field 726, which specifies an address mode and/or an access mode for the instruction. In one embodiment the access mode is used to define a data access alignment for the instruction. Some embodiments support access modes including a 16-byte aligned access mode and a 1-byte aligned access mode, where the byte alignment of the access mode determines the access alignment of the instruction operands. For example, when in a first mode, the instruction may use byte-aligned addressing for source and destination operands and when in a second mode, the instruction may use 16-byte-aligned addressing for all source and destination operands.

In one embodiment, the address mode portion of the access/address mode field 726 determines whether the instruction is to use direct or indirect addressing. When direct register addressing mode is used bits in the instruction directly provide the register address of one or more operands. When indirect register addressing mode is used, the register address of one or more operands may be computed based on an address register value and an address immediate field in the instruction.

In some embodiments instructions are grouped based on opcode 712 bit-fields to simplify Opcode decode 740. For an 8-bit opcode, bits 4, 5, and 6 allow the execution unit to determine the type of opcode. The precise opcode grouping shown is merely an example. In some embodiments, a move and logic opcode group 742 includes data movement and logic instructions (e.g., move (mov), compare (cmp)). In some embodiments, move and logic group 742 shares the five most significant bits (MSB), where move (mov) instructions are in the form of 0000xxxxb and logic instructions are in the form of 0001xxxxb. A flow control instruction group 744 (e.g., call, jump (jmp)) includes instructions in the form of 0010xxxxb (e.g., 0x20). A miscellaneous instruction group 746 includes a mix of instructions, including synchronization instructions (e.g., wait, send) in the form of 0011xxxxb (e.g., 0x30). A parallel math instruction group 748 includes component-wise arithmetic instructions (e.g., add, multiply (mul)) in the form of 0100xxxxb (e.g., 0x40). The parallel math group 748 performs the arithmetic operations in parallel across data channels. The vector math group 750 includes arithmetic instructions (e.g., dp4) in the form of 0101xxxxb (e.g., 0x50). The vector math group performs arithmetic such as dot product calculations on vector operands.

Graphics Pipeline

FIG. 8 is a block diagram of another embodiment of a graphics processor 800. Elements of FIG. 8 having the same reference numbers (or names) as the elements of any other figure herein can operate or function in any manner similar to that described elsewhere herein, but are not limited to such.

In some embodiments, graphics processor 800 includes a graphics pipeline 820, a media pipeline 830, a display engine 840, thread execution logic 850, and a render output pipeline 870. In some embodiments, graphics processor 800 is a graphics processor within a multi-core processing system that includes one or more general purpose processing cores. The graphics processor is controlled by register writes to one or more control registers (not shown) or via commands issued to graphics processor 800 via a ring interconnect 802. In some embodiments, ring interconnect 802 couples graphics processor 800 to other processing components, such as other graphics processors or general-purpose processors. Commands from ring interconnect 802 are interpreted by a command streamer 803, which supplies instructions to individual components of graphics pipeline 820 or media pipeline 830.

In some embodiments, command streamer 803 directs the operation of a vertex fetcher 805 that reads vertex data from memory and executes vertex-processing commands provided by command streamer 803. In some embodiments, vertex fetcher 805 provides vertex data to a vertex shader 807, which performs coordinate space transformation and lighting operations to each vertex. In some embodiments, vertex fetcher 805 and vertex shader 807 execute vertex-processing instructions by dispatching execution threads to execution units 852A-852B via a thread dispatcher 831.

In some embodiments, execution units 852A-852B are an array of vector processors having an instruction set for performing graphics and media operations. In some embodiments, execution units 852A-852B have an attached L1 cache 851 that is specific for each array or shared between the arrays. The cache can be configured as a data cache, an instruction cache, or a single cache that is partitioned to contain data and instructions in different partitions.

In some embodiments, graphics pipeline 820 includes tessellation components to perform hardware-accelerated tessellation of 3D objects. In some embodiments, a programmable hull shader 811 configures the tessellation operations. A programmable domain shader 817 provides back-end evaluation of tessellation output. A tessellator 813 operates at the direction of hull shader 811 and contains special purpose logic to generate a set of detailed geometric objects based on a coarse geometric model that is provided as input to graphics pipeline 820. In some embodiments, if tessellation is not used, tessellation components (e.g., hull shader 811, tessellator 813, and domain shader 817) can be bypassed.

In some embodiments, complete geometric objects can be processed by a geometry shader 819 via one or more threads dispatched to execution units 852A-852B, or can proceed directly to the clipper 829. In some embodiments, the geometry shader operates on entire geometric objects, rather than vertices or patches of vertices as in previous stages of the graphics pipeline. If the tessellation is disabled the geometry shader 819 receives input from the vertex shader 807. In some embodiments, geometry shader 819 is programmable by a geometry shader program to perform geometry tessellation if the tessellation units are disabled.

Before rasterization, a clipper 829 processes vertex data. The clipper 829 may be a fixed function clipper or a programmable clipper having clipping and geometry shader functions. In some embodiments, a rasterizer and depth test component 873 in the render output pipeline 870 dispatches pixel shaders to convert the geometric objects into their per pixel representations. In some embodiments, pixel shader logic is included in thread execution logic 850. In some embodiments, an application can bypass the rasterizer and depth test component 873 and access un-rasterized vertex data via a stream out unit 823.

The graphics processor 800 has an interconnect bus, interconnect fabric, or some other interconnect mechanism that allows data and message passing amongst the major components of the processor. In some embodiments, execution units 852A-852B and associated cache(s) 851, texture and media sampler 854, and texture/sampler cache 858 interconnect via a data port 856 to perform memory access and communicate with render output pipeline components of the processor. In some embodiments, sampler 854, caches 851, 858 and execution units 852A-852B each have separate memory access paths.

In some embodiments, render output pipeline 870 contains a rasterizer and depth test component 873 that converts vertex-based objects into an associated pixel-based representation. In some embodiments, the rasterizer logic includes a windower/masker unit to perform fixed function triangle and line rasterization. An associated render cache 878 and depth cache 879 are also available in some embodiments. A pixel operations component 877 performs pixel-based operations on the data, though in some instances, pixel operations associated with 2D operations (e.g. bit block image transfers with blending) are performed by the 2D engine 841, or substituted at display time by the display controller 843 using overlay display planes. In some embodiments, a shared L3 cache 875 is available to all graphics components, allowing the sharing of data without the use of main system memory.

In some embodiments, graphics processor media pipeline 830 includes a media engine 837 and a video front end 834. In some embodiments, video front end 834 receives pipeline commands from the command streamer 803. In some embodiments, media pipeline 830 includes a separate command streamer. In some embodiments, video front-end 834 processes media commands before sending the command to the media engine 837. In some embodiments, media engine 837 includes thread spawning functionality to spawn threads for dispatch to thread execution logic 850 via thread dispatcher 831.

In some embodiments, graphics processor 800 includes a display engine 840. In some embodiments, display engine 840 is external to processor 800 and couples with the graphics processor via the ring interconnect 802, or some other interconnect bus or fabric. In some embodiments, display engine 840 includes a 2D engine 841 and a display controller 843. In some embodiments, display engine 840 contains special purpose logic capable of operating independently of the 3D pipeline. In some embodiments, display controller 843 couples with a display device (not shown), which may be a system integrated display device, as in a laptop computer, or an external display device attached via a display device connector.

In some embodiments, graphics pipeline 820 and media pipeline 830 are configurable to perform operations based on multiple graphics and media programming interfaces and are not specific to any one application programming interface (API). In some embodiments, driver software for the graphics processor translates API calls that are specific to a particular graphics or media library into commands that can be processed by the graphics processor. In some embodiments, support is provided for the Open Graphics Library (OpenGL), Open Computing Language (OpenCL), and/or Vulkan graphics and compute API, all from the Khronos Group. In some embodiments, support may also be provided for the Direct3D library from the Microsoft Corporation. In some embodiments, a combination of these libraries may be supported. Support may also be provided for the Open Source Computer Vision Library (OpenCV). A future API with a compatible 3D pipeline would also be supported if a mapping can be made from the pipeline of the future API to the pipeline of the graphics processor.

Graphics Pipeline Programming

FIG. 9A is a block diagram illustrating a graphics processor command format 900 according to some embodiments. FIG. 9B is a block diagram illustrating a graphics processor command sequence 910 according to an embodiment. The solid lined boxes in FIG. 9A illustrate the components that are generally included in a graphics command while the dashed lines include components that are optional or that are only included in a sub-set of the graphics commands. The exemplary graphics processor command format 900 of FIG. 9A includes data fields to identify a target client 902 of the command, a command operation code (opcode) 904, and the relevant data 906 for the command. A sub-opcode 905 and a command size 908 are also included in some commands.

In some embodiments, client 902 specifies the client unit of the graphics device that processes the command data. In some embodiments, a graphics processor command parser examines the client field of each command to condition the further processing of the command and route the command data to the appropriate client unit. In some embodiments, the graphics processor client units include a memory interface unit, a render unit, a 2D unit, a 3D unit, and a media unit. Each client unit has a corresponding processing pipeline that processes the commands. Once the command is received by the client unit, the client unit reads the opcode 904 and, if present, sub-opcode 905 to determine the operation to perform. The client unit performs the command using information in data field 906. For some commands an explicit command size 908 is expected to specify the size of the command. In some embodiments, the command parser automatically determines the size of at least some of the commands based on the command opcode. In some embodiments commands are aligned via multiples of a double word.

The flow diagram in FIG. 9B shows an exemplary graphics processor command sequence 910. In some embodiments, software or firmware of a data processing system that features an embodiment of a graphics processor uses a version of the command sequence shown to set up, execute, and terminate a set of graphics operations. A sample command sequence is shown and described for purposes of example only as embodiments are not limited to these specific commands or to this command sequence. Moreover, the commands may be issued as batch of commands in a command sequence, such that the graphics processor will process the sequence of commands in at least partially concurrence.

In some embodiments, the graphics processor command sequence 910 may begin with a pipeline flush command 912 to cause any active graphics pipeline to complete the currently pending commands for the pipeline. In some embodiments, the 3D pipeline 922 and the media pipeline 924 do not operate concurrently. The pipeline flush is performed to cause the active graphics pipeline to complete any pending commands. In response to a pipeline flush, the command parser for the graphics processor will pause command processing until the active drawing engines complete pending operations and the relevant read caches are invalidated. Optionally, any data in the render cache that is marked ‘dirty’ can be flushed to memory. In some embodiments, pipeline flush command 912 can be used for pipeline synchronization or before placing the graphics processor into a low power state.

In some embodiments, a pipeline select command 913 is used when a command sequence requires the graphics processor to explicitly switch between pipelines. In some embodiments, a pipeline select command 913 is required only once within an execution context before issuing pipeline commands unless the context is to issue commands for both pipelines. In some embodiments, a pipeline flush command 912 is required immediately before a pipeline switch via the pipeline select command 913.

In some embodiments, a pipeline control command 914 configures a graphics pipeline for operation and is used to program the 3D pipeline 922 and the media pipeline 924. In some embodiments, pipeline control command 914 configures the pipeline state for the active pipeline. In one embodiment, the pipeline control command 914 is used for pipeline synchronization and to clear data from one or more cache memories within the active pipeline before processing a batch of commands.

In some embodiments, commands for the return buffer state 916 are used to configure a set of return buffers for the respective pipelines to write data. Some pipeline operations require the allocation, selection, or configuration of one or more return buffers into which the operations write intermediate data during processing. In some embodiments, the graphics processor also uses one or more return buffers to store output data and to perform cross thread communication. In some embodiments, configuring the return buffer state 916 includes selecting the size and number of return buffers to use for a set of pipeline operations.

The remaining commands in the command sequence differ based on the active pipeline for operations. Based on a pipeline determination 920, the command sequence is tailored to the 3D pipeline 922 beginning with the 3D pipeline state 930 or the media pipeline 924 beginning at the media pipeline state 940.

The commands to configure the 3D pipeline state 930 include 3D state setting commands for vertex buffer state, vertex element state, constant color state, depth buffer state, and other state variables that are to be configured before 3D primitive commands are processed. The values of these commands are determined at least in part based on the particular 3D API in use. In some embodiments, 3D pipeline state 930 commands are also able to selectively disable or bypass certain pipeline elements if those elements will not be used.

In some embodiments, 3D primitive 932 command is used to submit 3D primitives to be processed by the 3D pipeline. Commands and associated parameters that are passed to the graphics processor via the 3D primitive 932 command are forwarded to the vertex fetch function in the graphics pipeline. The vertex fetch function uses the 3D primitive 932 command data to generate vertex data structures. The vertex data structures are stored in one or more return buffers. In some embodiments, 3D primitive 932 command is used to perform vertex operations on 3D primitives via vertex shaders. To process vertex shaders, 3D pipeline 922 dispatches shader execution threads to graphics processor execution units.

In some embodiments, 3D pipeline 922 is triggered via an execute 934 command or event. In some embodiments, a register write triggers command execution. In some embodiments execution is triggered via a ‘go’ or ‘kick’ command in the command sequence. In one embodiment, command execution is triggered using a pipeline synchronization command to flush the command sequence through the graphics pipeline. The 3D pipeline will perform geometry processing for the 3D primitives. Once operations are complete, the resulting geometric objects are rasterized and the pixel engine colors the resulting pixels. Additional commands to control pixel shading and pixel back end operations may also be included for those operations.

In some embodiments, the graphics processor command sequence 910 follows the media pipeline 924 path when performing media operations. In general, the specific use and manner of programming for the media pipeline 924 depends on the media or compute operations to be performed. Specific media decode operations may be offloaded to the media pipeline during media decode. In some embodiments, the media pipeline can also be bypassed and media decode can be performed in whole or in part using resources provided by one or more general purpose processing cores. In one embodiment, the media pipeline also includes elements for general-purpose graphics processor unit (GPGPU) operations, where the graphics processor is used to perform SIMD vector operations using computational shader programs that are not explicitly related to the rendering of graphics primitives.

In some embodiments, media pipeline 924 is configured in a similar manner as the 3D pipeline 922. A set of commands to configure the media pipeline state 940 are dispatched or placed into a command queue before the media object commands 942. In some embodiments, commands for the media pipeline state 940 include data to configure the media pipeline elements that will be used to process the media objects. This includes data to configure the video decode and video encode logic within the media pipeline, such as encode or decode format. In some embodiments, commands for the media pipeline state 940 also support the use of one or more pointers to “indirect” state elements that contain a batch of state settings.

In some embodiments, media object commands 942 supply pointers to media objects for processing by the media pipeline. The media objects include memory buffers containing video data to be processed. In some embodiments, all media pipeline states must be valid before issuing a media object command 942. Once the pipeline state is configured and media object commands 942 are queued, the media pipeline 924 is triggered via an execute command 944 or an equivalent execute event (e.g., register write). Output from media pipeline 924 may then be post processed by operations provided by the 3D pipeline 922 or the media pipeline 924. In some embodiments, GPGPU operations are configured and executed in a similar manner as media operations.

Graphics Software Architecture

FIG. 10 illustrates exemplary graphics software architecture for a data processing system 1000 according to some embodiments. In some embodiments, software architecture includes a 3D graphics application 1010, an operating system 1020, and at least one processor 1030. In some embodiments, processor 1030 includes a graphics processor 1032 and one or more general-purpose processor core(s) 1034. The graphics application 1010 and operating system 1020 each execute in the system memory 1050 of the data processing system.

In some embodiments, 3D graphics application 1010 contains one or more shader programs including shader instructions 1012. The shader language instructions may be in a high-level shader language, such as the High Level Shader Language (HLSL) or the OpenGL Shader Language (GLSL). The application also includes executable instructions 1014 in a machine language suitable for execution by the general-purpose processor core 1034. The application also includes graphics objects 1016 defined by vertex data.

In some embodiments, operating system 1020 is a Microsoft® Windows® operating system from the Microsoft Corporation, a proprietary UNIX-like operating system, or an open source UNIX-like operating system using a variant of the Linux kernel. The operating system 1020 can support a graphics API 1022 such as the Direct3D API, the OpenGL API, or the Vulkan API. When the Direct3D API is in use, the operating system 1020 uses a front-end shader compiler 1024 to compile any shader instructions 1012 in HLSL into a lower-level shader language. The compilation may be a just-in-time (JIT) compilation or the application can perform shader pre-compilation. In some embodiments, high-level shaders are compiled into low-level shaders during the compilation of the 3D graphics application 1010. In some embodiments, the shader instructions 1012 are provided in an intermediate form, such as a version of the Standard Portable Intermediate Representation (SPIR) used by the Vulkan API.

In some embodiments, user mode graphics driver 1026 contains a back-end shader compiler 1027 to convert the shader instructions 1012 into a hardware specific representation. When the OpenGL API is in use, shader instructions 1012 in the GLSL high-level language are passed to a user mode graphics driver 1026 for compilation. In some embodiments, user mode graphics driver 1026 uses operating system kernel mode functions 1028 to communicate with a kernel mode graphics driver 1029. In some embodiments, kernel mode graphics driver 1029 communicates with graphics processor 1032 to dispatch commands and instructions.

IP Core Implementations

One or more aspects of at least one embodiment may be implemented by representative code stored on a machine-readable medium which represents and/or defines logic within an integrated circuit such as a processor. For example, the machine-readable medium may include instructions which represent various logic within the processor. When read by a machine, the instructions may cause the machine to fabricate the logic to perform the techniques described herein. Such representations, known as “IP cores,” are reusable units of logic for an integrated circuit that may be stored on a tangible, machine-readable medium as a hardware model that describes the structure of the integrated circuit. The hardware model may be supplied to various customers or manufacturing facilities, which load the hardware model on fabrication machines that manufacture the integrated circuit. The integrated circuit may be fabricated such that the circuit performs operations described in association with any of the embodiments described herein.

FIG. 11 is a block diagram illustrating an IP core development system 1100 that may be used to manufacture an integrated circuit to perform operations according to an embodiment. The IP core development system 1100 may be used to generate modular, re-usable designs that can be incorporated into a larger design or used to construct an entire integrated circuit (e.g., an SOC integrated circuit). A design facility 1130 can generate a software simulation 1110 of an IP core design in a high level programming language (e.g., C/C++). The software simulation 1110 can be used to design, test, and verify the behavior of the IP core using a simulation model 1112. The simulation model 1112 may include functional, behavioral, and/or timing simulations. A register transfer level (RTL) design 1115 can then be created or synthesized from the simulation model 1112. The RTL design 1115 is an abstraction of the behavior of the integrated circuit that models the flow of digital signals between hardware registers, including the associated logic performed using the modeled digital signals. In addition to an RTL design 1115, lower-level designs at the logic level or transistor level may also be created, designed, or synthesized. Thus, the particular details of the initial design and simulation may vary.

The RTL design 1115 or equivalent may be further synthesized by the design facility into a hardware model 1120, which may be in a hardware description language (HDL), or some other representation of physical design data. The HDL may be further simulated or tested to verify the IP core design. The IP core design can be stored for delivery to a 3rd party fabrication facility 1165 using non-volatile memory 1140 (e.g., hard disk, flash memory, or any non-volatile storage medium). Alternatively, the IP core design may be transmitted (e.g., via the Internet) over a wired connection 1150 or wireless connection 1160. The fabrication facility 1165 may then fabricate an integrated circuit that is based at least in part on the IP core design. The fabricated integrated circuit can be configured to perform operations in accordance with at least one embodiment described herein.

Exemplary System on a Chip Integrated Circuit

FIGS. 12-14 illustrate exemplary integrated circuits and associated graphics processors that may be fabricated using one or more IP cores, according to various embodiments described herein. In addition to what is illustrated, other logic and circuits may be included, including additional graphics processors/cores, peripheral interface controllers, or general purpose processor cores.

FIG. 12 is a block diagram illustrating an exemplary system on a chip integrated circuit 1200 that may be fabricated using one or more IP cores, according to an embodiment. Exemplary integrated circuit 1200 includes one or more application processor(s) 1205 (e.g., CPUs), at least one graphics processor 1210, and may additionally include an image processor 1215 and/or a video processor 1220, any of which may be a modular IP core from the same or multiple different design facilities. Integrated circuit 1200 includes peripheral or bus logic including a USB controller 1225, UART controller 1230, an SPI/SDIO controller 1235, and an I2S/I2C controller 1240. Additionally, the integrated circuit can include a display device 1245 coupled to one or more of a high-definition multimedia interface (HDMI) controller 1250 and a mobile industry processor interface (MIPI) display interface 1255. Storage may be provided by a flash memory subsystem 1260 including flash memory and a flash memory controller. Memory interface may be provided via a memory controller 1265 for access to SDRAM or SRAM memory devices. Some integrated circuits additionally include an embedded security engine 1270.

FIG. 13 is a block diagram illustrating an exemplary graphics processor 1310 of a system on a chip integrated circuit that may be fabricated using one or more IP cores, according to an embodiment. Graphics processor 1310 can be a variant of the graphics processor 1210 of FIG. 12. Graphics processor 1310 includes a vertex processor 1305 and one or more fragment processor(s) 1315A 1315N (e.g., 1315A, 13158, 1315C, 1315D, through 1315N-1, and 1315N). Graphics processor 1310 can execute different shader programs via separate logic, such that the vertex processor 1305 is optimized to execute operations for vertex shader programs, while the one or more fragment processor(s) 1315A-1315N execute fragment (e.g., pixel) shading operations for fragment or pixel shader programs. The vertex processor 1305 performs the vertex processing stage of the 3D graphics pipeline and generates primitives and vertex data. The fragment processor(s) 1315A-1315N use the primitive and vertex data generated by the vertex processor 1305 to produce a framebuffer that is displayed on a display device. In one embodiment, the fragment processor(s) 1315A-1315N are optimized to execute fragment shader programs as provided for in the OpenGL API, which may be used to perform similar operations as a pixel shader program as provided for in the Direct 3D API.

Graphics processor 1310 additionally includes one or more memory management units (MMUs) 1320A-1320B, cache(s) 1325A-1325B, and circuit interconnect(s) 1330A-1330B. The one or more MMU(s) 1320A-1320B provide for virtual to physical address mapping for graphics processor 1310, including for the vertex processor 1305 and/or fragment processor(s) 1315A-1315N, which may reference vertex or image/texture data stored in memory, in addition to vertex or image/texture data stored in the one or more cache(s) 1325A-1325B. In one embodiment the one or more MMU(s) 1320A-1320B may be synchronized with other MMUs within the system, including one or more MMUs associated with the one or more application processor(s) 1205, image processor 1215, and/or video processor 1220 of FIG. 12, such that each processor 1205-1220 can participate in a shared or unified virtual memory system. The one or more circuit interconnect(s) 1330A-1330B enable graphics processor 1310 to interface with other IP cores within the SoC, either via an internal bus of the SoC or via a direct connection, according to embodiments.

FIG. 14 is a block diagram illustrating an additional exemplary graphics processor 1410 of a system on a chip integrated circuit that may be fabricated using one or more IP cores, according to an embodiment. Graphics processor 1410 can be a variant of the graphics processor 1210 of FIG. 12. Graphics processor 1410 includes the one or more MMU(s) 1320A-1320B, cache(s) 1325A-1325B, and circuit interconnect(s) 1330A-1330B of the integrated circuit 1300 of FIG. 13.

Graphics processor 1410 includes one or more shader core(s) 1415A-1415N (e.g., 1415A, 1415B, 1415C, 1415D, 1415E, 1415F, through 1315N-1, and 1315N), which provides for a unified shader core architecture in which a single core or type or core can execute all types of programmable shader code, including shader program code to implement vertex shaders, fragment shaders, and/or compute shaders. The exact number of shader cores present can vary among embodiments and implementations. Additionally, graphics processor 1410 includes an inter-core task manager 1405, which acts as a thread dispatcher to dispatch execution threads to one or more shader core(s) 1415A-1415N and a tiling unit 1418 to accelerate tiling operations for tile-based rendering, in which rendering operations for a scene are subdivided in image space, for example to exploit local spatial coherence within a scene or to optimize use of internal caches.

Apparatus and Method for Optimized Tile-Based Immediate Mode Rendering

As mentioned, Tile-Based Immediate Mode Rendering (TBIMR) architectures include multiple on-chip buffers for storing geometry for each tile. In current architectures, one on-chip buffer stores the actual geometry (e.g., vertices, triangles) for each tile and one or more other on-chip buffers store pointers to the various vertices associated with each tile.

In one embodiment of the invention, these buffers, storing pointers and vertex/triangle data are backed up by memory such as the system memory subsystem. As a result, when a particular buffer is filled up, the pointers or vertex/triangle data is spilled out to memory rather than being discarded. In addition, in one embodiment, an intelligent pre-fetch mechanism is implemented to reduce memory access latency for pointer or vertex/triangle data needed during rasterization.

FIG. 15 illustrates one embodiment of a graphics processing engine 1520 which includes a TBIMR rendering module 1535 for performing tile-based immediate mode rendering (TBIMR) using geometry data stored within a set of on-chip geometry buffers 1525. As mentioned, in one embodiment, one or more of the buffers store the geometry data (e.g., vertices, triangles) while one or more other buffers store pointers to the geometry data for each individual tile. FIG. 16, for example, shows geometry data buffers 1600 for storing vertices/triangles and a separate pointer queue 1601-1603 associated with each image tile. In the illustrated example, pointer queue 1601 is associated with tile 1, pointer queue 1602 is associated with tile 2, and so on, through pointer queue 1603 which is associated with tile N. In one embodiment, the geometry data buffers 1600 and pointer queues 1601-1603 are all backed up by memory-backed geometry storage 1510 which may be an allocated portion of the memory subsystem (e.g., including system caches and main memory). Thus, when a buffer is “flushed” it is stored within the system memory hierarchy (or other memory structure) rather than being discarded as in prior implementation. In addition, in one embodiment, once the geometry data stream has filled the on-chip buffers 1525, any additional geometry data is spilled out to memory and the write pointer 1560 updated accordingly (i.e., which points to the location within the on-chip buffers 1525 or memory backed geometry storage 1510 where the data should be written). Then, as space becomes available within the on-chip buffers 1525, the geometry data is prefetched from memory so that the data is available when needed (updating the write pointer accordingly).

Returning to FIG. 15, when the TBIMR rendering module 1535 requires geometry data or pointers which is no longer available within the on-chip buffers 1525, it must be fetched from memory. In one embodiment, a prefetch module 1528 intelligently prefetches those portions of the geometry data which the TBIMR rendering module 1535 will require at some point in the future, thereby reducing the memory latency penalty for geometry reads. Thus, geometry read/write bandwidth may be maintained at an acceptable level while making significant improvements to rasterization (pixel) bandwidth normally affected by TBIMR buffer flushes.

Regardless of how the geometry data is fetched from memory, in one embodiment, the TBIMR rendering module 1535 performs tile based rendering and stores the results for each image frame within a frame buffer 1540. The image frame is then read out and displayed within left/right displays 1552 of a head mounted display (HMD) 1550. While a single frame buffer 1540 is illustrated in FIG. 15 for simplicity, separate frame buffers may be implemented for the left and right displays of the HMD 1550.

In one embodiment, TBIMR rendering module 1535 selects the appropriate geometry data and renders each frame in accordance with signals provided by user/eye tracking module 1556 on the head mounted display. For example, sensors such as accelerometers and eye tracking cameras may track the motion of the user's head and eyes to determine the particular objects within each frame currently being viewed by the user.

A method in accordance with one embodiment of the invention is illustrated in FIG. 17. The method may be implemented within the context of the system architectures described above, but is not limited to any particular system architectures.

At 1700, if it is determined that the on-chip buffers are over-subscribed (e.g., the geometry data buffer and/or pointer queues containing pointers to the geometry data for each tile), then at 1701, the write pointer is updated such that any additional geometry data is stored to off-chip memory. If it is determined, at 1702, that the render pass is complete, then at 1703, the on-chip buffer is drained first and the geometry data is pre-fetched from memory as space becomes available within the on-chip storage. At 1704, the TBIMR renderer performs tile-based rendering operations using the pre-fetched data.

Method and Apparatus for Occlusion Culling within a Tile-Based Immediate Mode Renderer (TBIMR)

The embodiments of the invention provide for improved occlusion culling within a tile-based immediate mode renderer (TBIMR). A graphics processor that can support TBIMR works roughly as follows. The render target is divided into disjoint regions (e.g., rectangles), called “tiles” of pixels (or samples) that together cover the entire render target. Within the geometry phase, a set of triangles are first vertex shaded, and then sorted into the tiles so that each tile has a list of triangles that are overlapping that tile. Afterwards, rasterization and pixel processing can commence for each tile. Several tiles can be processed in parallel if sufficient resources are available. Previous solutions tend to use Zmax-occlusion culling, where parts of triangles can be occlusion-culled on a sub-tile basis (e.g., 8×8 pixels, assuming that a tile is, for example, 128×128 pixels). When pixel processing of the set of triangles starts, the graphics processor can also start geometry processing the next set of triangles in parallel.

In one embodiment of the invention, at the geometry stage, per-tile 3D bounding boxes (BBs) are computed for the transformed triangles. The BBs are then used to perform occlusion culling at the start of the tile render pass. The BBs can be tested against a depth buffer such as the HiZ buffer. If occluded, all triangles in the set can be discarded from further processing since they will not be visible and will not contribute to the image.

FIG. 18 illustrates an exemplary graphics processing engine 1800 which includes a geometry processing module 1801 and a pixel processing module 1811. The geometry processing module 1801 may include circuitry and logic for performing various operations on sets of triangles 1830 such as vertex processing, tessellation and geometry shader processing. The pixel processing module 1811 may perform triangle setup, rasterization (sometimes also called triangle traversal or windowing), and various other pixel processing operations such as pixel shading and blending.

In one embodiment, the graphics processing engine 1800 supports TBIMR. Consequently, the pipeline stages operate on a set of triangles at a time (e.g., N triangles where N may be any number, such as 500, for example). The geometry module 1801 may perform operations so that the final position of each vertex of each triangle becomes known. In one embodiment, it then appends each triangle to the triangle list of any tile that the triangle overlaps. When the N triangles have been geometry processed, each tile will include (or otherwise have associated therewith), a small list of triangles that overlap that tile. The pixel processing module 1811 then processes one or more tiles in parallel, depending on how many resources are available. When the triangles in a tile's triangle list are processed, the triangles undergo triangle setup, rasterization, HiZ testing, depth testing, stencil testing, alpha testing, pixel shader processing, and various other types of per-pixel work.

The embodiments of the invention include features in both the geometry module 1801 and the pixel processing module 1811. In particular, in one embodiment, bounding box processing logic 1803 within the geometry processing module 1811 generates and stores a bounding box which is initially empty. When the first triangle (of the N triangles) is processed by triangle list processing logic 1802, the bounding box is set to be a box that includes that triangle. As the triangle list processing logic 1802 processes each triangle, the bounding box potentially grows to include that triangle as well in a conservative manner. This means that when the N triangles have been processed, a bounding box has been generated such that all the triangles are inside the bounding box.

Before the N triangles are processed by the pixel processing module 1811, the bounding box is forwarded from the geometry phase. In one embodiment, occlusion testing and culling logic 1812 occlusion tests each bounding box by comparing it with depth data stored within a depth buffer 1808 (e.g., the HiZ buffer or per-pixel depths). If the BB is occluded, then its containing geometry (e.g., its bounded triangles) will also be occluded. Consequently, the triangles need not be processed any further and are discarded as indicated at 1809. The remaining triangles which are not occluded are passed through the remaining pixel processing stages 1815, which generates an image that is ultimately displayed within the image frame on a display 1830. This embodiment results in a speedup for each set of triangles that are culled since the per-pixel processing (including triangle setup) can be avoided.

There are different ways to represent a 3D bounding box. It may be an oriented bounding box, free to take on any orientation and size. However, these are harder to compute. Instead, a bounding box may be computed which is 2D in screen space and then has an additional minimum depth and possibly also a maximum depth. Since a BB needs to be computed on the fly, it is much easier to do it in this manner since the minimum depth is just the minimum of the current box's min depth and the current triangle's minimum depth of its vertices. The maximum depth is updated similarly, but with maximum instead of minimum. A 2D BB used in one embodiment has (minx, miny, maxx, maxy) and the minx values are updated using the minimum of the minx (of the BB) and the minimum of the x-coordinates of the triangle. Similar updates may be performed for the other variables (miny, maxx, maxy).

Given an oriented BB, an occlusion query may be performed with that box as input geometry. If that oriented BB is occluded, then the graphics pipeline does not need to process any of triangles that are contained in that oriented BB. Otherwise, the pipeline needs to continue with pixel phase processing (starting with triangle setup, rasterization, etc) as usual. Note that the occlusion query may be performed against the HiZ buffer only for faster processing or against per-pixel depths for better accuracy.

Given a BB consisting of a 2D bounding box in screen space and a minimum depth, and possibly a maximum depth, the graphics pipeline may handle it as follows. Here, an occlusion query may be used in which a rectangle is drawn covering exactly the 2D bounding box and having a depth equal to the minimum depth of the box. That occlusion query may then operate either on HiZ data (on a sub-tile basis) or using per-pixel depths, similar to the above.

Alternatively, a small unit may be used that handles the occlusion test. This unit traverses the 2D bounding box and visits all sub-tiles that overlap the 2D BB. For each such sub-tile, the unit performs a test between the box's minimum depth and the Zmax-value from HiZ for that sub-tile. If the box's minimum depth is smaller or equal to the Zmax-value of that sub-tile, then it cannot be guaranteed that the N triangles are occluded. As a result, when this happens for the first time, the rest of the occlusion tests for these N triangles can be terminated and instead each triangle can be processed with pixel processing. On the other hand, if all sub-tiles traversed during processing the 2D BB indicate that the box is occluded, then the processing of all triangles associated with that BB can be terminated.

A flow diagram of a TBIMR pipeline in accordance with one embodiment of the invention is illustrated in FIG. 19. The method may be implemented within the context of the system architectures described herein, but is not limited to any particular system architecture.

At 1900, a set of N triangles are queued. At 1901, a set of N triangles are passed to the tile-based geometry phase which may include a variety of sub-stages such as vertex processing. At 1902, a bounding box of triangles is accumulated into a bounding box of overlapping tiles with minimum depth and possibly maximum depth. At 1903, the triangles and tiles are stored and the triangle list is generated/updated for triangles which overlap the tile. At 1904, the pixel processing stage is started for a tile and the bounding box of the tile is occlusion culled against data in the depth buffer or HiZ. If occluded, determined at 1905, additional processing of the N triangles is skipped. If not occluded, then at 1906, the N triangles are submitted for remaining pixel processing.

In one embodiment, a maximum depth of the accumulated BB is stored as well. If the maximum depth of the BB is smaller than the minimum depth in HiZ for a particular tile, then reading the per-pixel depths of the tile can be avoided. If all pixels in the tile are overwritten, then per-pixel depths never need to be read. Otherwise, one may need to read all of them or parts of them. While the description above has been implemented using a LESS_THAN depth test, it may be extended to other tests.

In one embodiment, the bounding box is used for another purpose, which is orthogonal to that described above. As such, the following embodiments may be used in combination with the above embodiments, but also used in isolation.

One embodiment of the bounding box processing logic 1803 determines and stores the maximum depth of the accumulated BB (e.g., as well as the minimum depth). If the maximum depth of the BB is smaller than the minimum depth stored in the depth buffer (e.g., the HiZ) for this particular sub-tile then reading the per-pixel depths of the sub-tile can be avoided. We say that such a BB is “visible” in such tiles. If all pixels in the sub-tile are overwritten, then per-pixel depths for that sub-tile never need to be read. Otherwise, all or portions of the per-pixel depths may need to be read at a later stage. Note that if all sub-tiles that overlap the 2D bounding are visible, then no HiZ testing is needed for any of the triangles and no per-pixel testing is required. This provides for a speedup, even for visible objects.

FIG. 20 illustrates three different examples: a BB 2001 which is fully visible, a BB 2002 which is occluded, and a BB 2003 for which a result is ambiguous (i.e., partially occluded). As illustrated, for each sub-tile, there is a Z_(MIN) value (fat solid lines) and a Z_(MAX) value (fat dotted lines) from the HiZ buffer which the bounding box processing logic 1803 compares to the Z_(MIN)Box and Z_(MAX)Box for the three different BBs 2001-2003. The BB 2001 in the upper left corner has a Z_(MAX)Box value which is smaller than all the Z_(MIN) values that the box overlaps. This means that the BB 2001 is definitely in front of everything that has been rendered so far (i.e., fully visible), and so for all the triangles in that box, no HiZ testing per triangle is required and no per-pixel depth tests are initially required. However, a triangle that is being rendered that is inside the box can affect both the HiZ buffer and the per-pixel depths, so triangles later in that set of triangles may need to be tested against HiZ and against the per-pixel depths but one embodiment keeps track of whether a sub-tile has been updated and avoids all this work until some triangle has affected the sub-tile, resulting in performance improvements.

The rightmost BB 2002 has a Z_(MIN)Box which is greater that all the Z_(MAX) values from HiZ that the box overlaps and so this box is fully occluded. This is the example initially discussed above with respect to FIGS. 18-19. Consequently, there is no need to render anything in that BB 2002. The BB 2003 at the bottom is ambiguous because it is neither fully occluded nor fully visible. So in this variant, the triangles are rendered as usual. However, in one embodiment discussed below, some performance can be gained when processing BB 2003.

One embodiment which improves performance when processing BB 2003 is described with respect to FIG. 16. When a set of triangles and its BB 1601 reach the pixel phase, then the occlusion testing & culling logic 1812 sets two bits per sub-tile to indicate the status. By way of example, these two bits can have the following values:

00: fully visible

01: fully occluded

10: ambiguous

11: clear

So, when processing of the BB 1601 starts, these bits are set to 11, because nothing is known about the status at this point in time. If the BB 1601 is fully visible with respect to a particular sub-tile, then its bits are set to 00. If the box if fully occluded with respect to a particular sub-tile, then its bits are set to 01. If the box is neither fully occluded nor fully visible, then the sub-tile is set to ambiguous, 10. In one embodiment, if all sub-tiles that the box overlaps are fully visible, then the triangles can be processed as described above with respect to FIG. 20. If all the sub-tiles that the box overlap are fully occluded then no triangles need to be processed as initially described above with respect to FIGS. 18-19. If all sub-tiles that the box overlap are ambiguous then, in one embodiment, all the triangles are rendered as usual.

There may be a mix of sub-tiles that the box overlaps including fully visible, fully occluded, and ambiguous, as illustrated in FIG. 21. One embodiment of the invention starts rendering the triangles, but checks the two bits before initiating HiZ testing for a particular sub-tile. If the two bits are 01 (fully occluded), then processing of the triangle can be terminated but only in that sub-tile. If the two bits are 00 (fully visible), then the tile may be processed as described above (i.e., for the “fully visible” case). If the two bits are 10 (ambiguous) then the triangle is rendered as usual in this particular sub-tile.

Apparatus and Method for Tile-Based Selective Frame Buffer Update

As mentioned, some embodiments of the invention split an image frame into rectangular non-overlapping regions, referred to as tiles. FIG. 22A, for example, illustrates an exemplary frame buffer 2210 containing an image frame which has been subdivided into 9 tiles (tiles 0-8). In one embodiment, an image renderer renders 2201 the individual tiles. To improve efficiency, selective frame buffer update module 2202 only updates a specified subset of the tiles in each successive image frame (rather than updating all of the tiles for each frame). The selective frame buffer update module 2202 operates in accordance with a set of tile update rules. 2203 which may be configured to select tiles to be updated based on a variety of different algorithms and/or parameters (some examples of which are provided below).

FIG. 22B illustrates another embodiment in which each image frame is subdivided into 4 tiles and the selective frame buffer update module 2202 selectively updates the tiles in each frame in accordance with tile update rules 2203. Using this example, when rendering the first frame, the selective frame buffer update module 2202 may update only tile 0 in the first frame, only tile 1 in the second frame, tile 2 in the third frame, and tile 4 in the fourth frame. Using this “round-robin” technique, when it is time to render frame 5, the frame buffer update module 2202 may update only tile 0 again.

More generally, one embodiment splits the screen into M tiles, enumerated from 0 to M. Then in frame 0, the selective frame buffer update module 2202 renders to all tiles such that:

(x+0)%4==0,

where x is the tile number and % is the modulo operator.

For frame 1, the selective frame buffer update module 2202 would choose to update tiles where the following is true:

(x+1)%4==0

In general, the frame buffer module 2202 would choose to update tiles (identified by tile number x) where the following is true: (x+k) %4==0, for the k'th frame.

This example shows one way how to first select 25% (on frame 0) of the tiles, then another 25% of the tiles (on frame 1) and then another 25% of the tiles (frame 2), and then the final 25% of the tiles to render to (frame 3). So, after 4 frames all tiles have been rendered to.

However, other embodiments of the tile update rules 2203 may configure the selective frame buffer update module 2202 to update some percentage of tiles in any possible way. For example, in one embodiment, this is accomplished using a pseudorandom selection of the tiles so that it appears more random (instead of choosing every 4th tile). In another embodiment, the selective frame buffer update module 2202 tracks the extent to which tiles have been changing between frames, and chooses to update those tiles (or tile) which are anticipated to change the most between the next successive frames. Various other techniques/algorithms may be employed to choose which tiles to update in each successive frame.

For example, in one embodiment, a tile may have changed but if the changes are not beyond some specified threshold (i.e., so as to be visually noticeable), then a new tile is not used. Some percentage may be used to determine the extent of the change and the threshold (e.g., if the tile is only change by 1% or less, then don't update). Various techniques may be employed to perform the comparison of tiles. For example, a lower resolution version of a tile for the present frame may be compared with a lower resolution version of the tile in a prior frame to reduce rendering costs. In an embodiment in which frames are being rendered at a server and streamed over a network, either full or low resolution rendering may be performed at the server prior to transmission over a network. Consequently, while rendering resources may be consumed to render each tile, network bandwidth will be conserved for those tiles which are not transmitted (i.e., assuming they have not changed by a threshold amount).

In one embodiment, after data has been rendered in all tiles, and to make the update smoother, when new data is rendered to a tile (e.g., in the current frame) it is combined and weighted with the old data from the previous tile (e.g., from the prior frame in which the tile was updated). One such embodiment is illustrated in FIG. 23 in which tile blending module 2301 combines the new data for a tile, tile X, output by image renderer 2201 with data for tile X from the prior frame, which has been stored in a memory/storage device 2300. In one embodiment, the result for the new tile X is determined using: α*new+(1−α)*old, so that the new data is mixed with the old.

The terms “module,” “logic,” and “module” used in the present application, may refer to a circuit for performing the function specified. In some embodiments, the function specified may be performed by a circuit in combination with software such as by software executed by a general purpose processor.

Embodiments of the invention may include various steps, which have been described above. The steps may be embodied in machine-executable instructions which may be used to cause a general-purpose or special-purpose processor to perform the steps. Alternatively, these steps may be performed by specific hardware components that contain hardwired logic for performing the steps, or by any combination of programmed computer components and custom hardware components.

As described herein, instructions may refer to specific configurations of hardware such as application specific integrated circuits (ASICs) configured to perform certain operations or having a predetermined functionality or software instructions stored in memory embodied in a non-transitory computer readable medium. Thus, the techniques shown in the figures can be implemented using code and data stored and executed on one or more electronic devices (e.g., an end station, a network element, etc.). Such electronic devices store and communicate (internally and/or with other electronic devices over a network) code and data using computer machine-readable media, such as non-transitory computer machine-readable storage media (e.g., magnetic disks; optical disks; random access memory; read only memory; flash memory devices; phase-change memory) and transitory computer machine-readable communication media (e.g., electrical, optical, acoustical or other form of propagated signals—such as carrier waves, infrared signals, digital signals, etc.).

In addition, such electronic devices typically include a set of one or more processors coupled to one or more other components, such as one or more storage devices (non-transitory machine-readable storage media), user input/output devices (e.g., a keyboard, a touchscreen, and/or a display), and network connections. The coupling of the set of processors and other components is typically through one or more busses and bridges (also termed as bus controllers). The storage device and signals carrying the network traffic respectively represent one or more machine-readable storage media and machine-readable communication media. Thus, the storage device of a given electronic device typically stores code and/or data for execution on the set of one or more processors of that electronic device. Of course, one or more parts of an embodiment of the invention may be implemented using different combinations of software, firmware, and/or hardware. Throughout this detailed description, for the purposes of explanation, numerous specific details were set forth in order to provide a thorough understanding of the present invention. It will be apparent, however, to one skilled in the art that the invention may be practiced without some of these specific details. In certain instances, well known structures and functions were not described in elaborate detail in order to avoid obscuring the subject matter of the present invention. Accordingly, the scope and spirit of the invention should be judged in terms of the claims which follow. 

What is claimed is:
 1. An apparatus comprising: a set of on-chip geometry buffers including a first buffer to store geometry data, and a set of pointer buffers to store pointers to the geometry data; a tile-based immediate mode rendering (TBIMR) module to perform tile-based immediate mode rendering using geometry data and pointers stored within the set of on-chip geometry buffers; spill circuitry to determine when the on-chip geometry buffers are over-subscribed and responsively spill additional geometry data and/or pointers to an off-chip memory; and a prefetcher to start prefetching the geometry data from the off-chip memory as space becomes available within the on-chip geometry buffers, the TBIMR module to perform tile-based immediate mode rendering using the geometry data prefetched from the off-chip memory.
 2. The apparatus as in claim 1 wherein the off-chip memory comprises a system memory.
 3. The apparatus as in claim 2 wherein a separate pointer buffer is managed for each tile to be processed by the TBIMR module.
 4. The apparatus as in claim 3 further comprising: a write pointer to be updated responsive to the spill circuitry spilling the additional geometry data to the off-chip memory.
 5. An apparatus comprising: a geometry processing circuit of a tile-based immediate mode rendering (TBIMR) pipeline to perform geometric processing operations on sets of triangles, each subset of triangles associated with a tile of an image frame and each tile having a plurality of sub-tiles, the geometry processing circuit comprising a bounding box processing module to grow a bounding box to include each triangle in the set of triangles, wherein when all of the set of triangles have been processed, a first bounding box has been generated to include all of the triangles; a pixel processing circuit to receive the first bounding box, the pixel processing circuit including: a depth buffer to store depth data; and an occlusion testing and culling module to occlusion test the first bounding box by comparing it with the depth data stored within the depth buffer, the depth data comprising a minimum depth value and a maximum depth value for each sub-tile, wherein: if the first bounding box has a maximum depth value which is smaller than all of the minimum depth values of the sub-tiles, then the set of triangles in the first bounding box are passed to remaining pixel processing stages and flagged as visible; if the first bounding box has a minimum depth value which is greater than all of the maximum depth values of the sub-tiles, then first set of triangles in the first bounding box are discarded.
 6. The apparatus as in claim 5 wherein if the first bounding box has a maximum depth value which is smaller than all of the minimum depth values of the sub-tiles, then no additional depth buffer testing is performed in the remaining pixel processing stages until the pixels have been overwritten.
 7. The apparatus as in claim 6 wherein the occlusion testing and culling module is to set N bits per sub-tile to indicate status of the first bounding box relative to the sub-tiles.
 8. The apparatus as in claim 7 wherein N=2 and wherein the status is defined by a first value to indicate that the first bounding box is fully visible with respect to the sub-tile, a second value to indicate that the first bounding box is fully occluded with respect to the sub-tile, and a third value to indicate that the first bounding box is ambiguous with respect to the sub-tile.
 9. The apparatus as in claim 7 wherein the pixel processing circuit checks the N bits before initiating depth buffer testing for each sub-tile, wherein if the two bits indicate that the first bounding box is fully occluded with respect to a first sub-tile, then triangle processing is terminated but only for the first sub-tile, if the two bits indicate that the first bounding box is fully visible, then triangle processing proceeds.
 10. The apparatus as in claim 8 wherein the first bounding box is a 2D bounding box which the occlusion testing and culling module tests against all sub-tiles that overlap the 2D bounding box.
 11. An apparatus comprising: a tile-based immediate mode renderer to render a plurality of tiles for each image frame; a selective frame buffer update module to selectively update specified tiles in each successive image frame in accordance with tile update rules; and a tile blending module to combine values from a current tile in a current frame with values from the tile in a prior frame to generate a blended tile, the blended tile to be displayed in the current frame.
 12. The apparatus as in claim 11 wherein the update rules specify that the selective frame buffer update module is to update those tiles which have changed most significantly between frames.
 13. The apparatus as in claim 11 wherein the update rules specify that the selective frame buffer update module is to update N tiles in each new image frame.
 14. The apparatus as in claim 13 wherein each image frame includes M tiles where M>N and wherein the M tiles in each new image frame on a round-robin basis.
 15. The apparatus as in claim 11 wherein the tile blending module is to combine new data for a first tile with data for the first tile from the prior frame which has been stored in a memory/storage device.
 16. The apparatus as in claim 15 wherein the tile blending module is to determine the blended tile using α*[new tile data]+(1−α)*[old tile data] where α is selected to be between 0 and
 1. 